Lingering
by croxley
Summary: He is mesmerized by her movements, and how she fights with her covers until they are piled up at the end of her bed, and he watches the erratic rise and fall of her chest, and he almost misses the ability to breathe. AU. Ghost Edward.


Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended.

* * *

 **Lingering**

He is mesmerized by her movements, and how she fights with her covers until they are piled up at the end of her bed, and he watches the erratic rise and fall of her chest, and he almost misses the ability to breathe. AU. Ghost Edward.

•••

There is something to be said about a beautiful young woman thrashing about in her bed, in the throes of some sickly pleasurable nightmare. He knows that it's a little bit pleasurable because he can smell the heat and desire rising from her body. It's funny how being dead has awakened his senses, almost sharpened them. He shakes his head. Tragic.

He's startled by the sound of his name falling from her lips, and he's sure that if he had a pulse it would have either jumped or stopped completely.

He pulls the chair up close to the bed, and straddles it backwards, his chin resting on the back of it, as he stares at her. Moving things around isn't as difficult as that old Patrick Swayze movie makes it seem. He is mesmerized by her movements, and how she fights with her covers until they are piled up at the end of her bed, and he watches the erratic rise and fall of her chest, and he almost misses the ability to breathe.

Her body is covered in a sweet smelling sheen of sweat, and he's so tempted to reach out and touch her. To lick at the beads of sweat forming on her stomach. Still he doesn't want his fingers to slip through her body. He shudders at the memory of how Emmett simply walked through him a week ago, all the heat from Emmett's body just shattering the collected, soothing cold of his new temperature. He has to admit that he kind of likes the cold.

Her entire body is shaking, and he watches in fascination as she whimpers, and then she's clawing at the air as she suddenly sits up, her breathing heavy as her pretty brown eyes fly open.

He opens his mouth and a sigh escapes him, and at the sound she turns to look at him and her eyes widen. She scoots back on her bed, draws her knees up against her chest and her breathing grows heavy again, only this time its with fear rather than the pleasurable distress of her dreams from only moments before.

"What…" she begins, and takes a deep breath, composing herself in the blink of an eye, and that trick still impresses him. "What are you doing here, Edward?"

She says his name pointedly now, not all full of heat and passion on a single edgy breath like she'd said it in her sleep just a little while ago, and he wonders what his role might have been in that dream.

"Why were you calling out my name in your sleep?" he whispers.

She winces and draws in a deep breath. "I didn't realize I was," she replies stiffly.

"You did," he says softly, and his dark eyes are full of remorse as he looks at her, and then he turns to look down at his hands. He's wringing them in his nervousness, and when he reaches for his collar, she can't take it anymore.

"Will you stop it, and just tell me why in the hell you're here? It's not like this is real or anything. It's one of those lucid dreams where you wake up from one dream only to realize you're still dreaming," she says logically, but he can see the doubt in her eyes.

He shrugs and finally looks back at her head on. "Well if you're dreaming, I'm here because on some unconscious level you want me here. On the other hand, if this is real I guess I'm here to say I'm sorry, and to ask for forgiveness so that I can move on or continue to haunt you or whatever. I'm not exactly sure how this works. I was more a math and business type geek. I never was all that into philosophy, because I really didn't want to analyze how fucked up I became."

"Okay that makes sense in a really weird way, so stop…just stop it," she snaps, and he can't help smiling, because she's so flustered from all of this, and he has never seen her flustered like this. It's kind of refreshing and appealing.

"So, what were you dreaming about, and why exactly did it involve me?" he asks in genuine curiosity.

He watches as color rises to her cheeks and he kind of envies the living for their ability to blush so easily. He thinks this look suits her because she's back to looking all innocent, like before she saw him die.

Her eyes narrow, and there is the new Bella Swan, not vulnerable. No. She hasn't been vulnerable since that night, when he called her to meet up, only for her to see him jump to his death.

"What makes you think I'll forgive you?" she bites out.

He snorts. "I never said I thought you would. I'm here because I don't have anything better to do. I'm kind of dead, and so far you're the only one who can see me. Alice saw me in the mirror once, but she freaked and I can't bring myself to scare her like that again. Emmett was so drunk he just walked through me like I wasn't even there, like when I was alive. You though, you can see me. So call this a lack of options. It's not like I crawled up out of my broken body and thought, 'Hmm… Why don't I go haunt Bella Swan until she cracks, and then I can really break her like I meant to when she dumped me for Jake.' It's not like I'm here to get revenge. I'm just here. I could care less about my problems, they're done with, and I'm dead, what's there to worry about? I'm lingering. I guess that's what you call it."

"Well go linger somewhere else," she snaps.

He rolls his eyes. "I don't know, I kind of like this. It's been a long time since I've talked to someone, and they actually heard me and talked back."

She groans and her head falls back against the wall. "If I forgive you will you leave already?"

"Tell me about your dream, Bella."

She sighs, and since this is just a really tweaked dream and he's not really here she gives in. "Fine. It starts out with me dancing with Jake, and we end up in his room and he pulls me down into the covers, and he's kissing me and other things, and then I look down and when he looks up it's you, and you're the one kissing me and other things."

"Things like what?" he asks and cocks his head to the side, gauging her reaction.

He notices the color blooming on her face again and her tongue is gliding across her lips.

"Sexual things?" he prompts. "Like I'm touching you, licking you, tasting you, and you like it?"

He is starting to pick up the scent of her desire again, like it's a heavy part of the atmosphere and it's seeping into him, and he's getting warmer, and it's almost like there's a pulse flickering inside of him, a faint fluttering at his wrists and his throat, and he takes in the first breath of air he's had in months and it tastes good and it feels right, so right.

He looks at her in surprise, and his eyes widen as he sees her eyes grow dark, and he knows they're filled with desire. He lets out his breath, and takes another eagerly as he stands. He holds his hand out to her, and asks, "Will you dance with me?"

She gives him an odd look. "Are you serious?"

He shrugs. "This is a dream, right? What do you have to lose? I'm dead, what can I possibly do to hurt you?"

"Other than what you've already done?" she asks, but she slips her hand into his, and he's stunned to find that he's holding her hand, he's corporeal, and her touch is making his body warm up even more.

He ends up with his hands firmly on her waist, and her hands are on his shoulders, and there is about a foot between them. She looks up at him, and sighs, "This is pointless. There's no music."

He begins to hum, and starts to sway and she gives in and laughs once she realizes what he's humming.

"Time of Your Life?" she asks him. "You have got to be kidding."

He smiles and a small laugh escapes his mouth as he shrugs and replies, "Ironic isn't it?"

She nods and shifts closer against him, caught up in this odd dream, because it has to be a dream. It has to be.

It's when he draws her against him, and nuzzles her hair with his nose that she returns to some sense of reality. She stiffens, and he draws back, looking at her, and she doesn't care about the sadness and the remorse in his deep green eyes. She remembers her other dream, she remembers that night on the roof and tries to forget how he looked before he stepped off of the ledge like it was some anticipated dance move.

"What is this? This is crazy. Just leave! This is my dream and I don't want you here anymore," she growls.

He tilts his head, a sort of resigned expression on his face as he clucks his tongue and says, "Bella you should know by now that when you dance with the devil, the devil doesn't change, he changes you."

Edward is impressed at the spark of anger that flares in her eyes as she shoves him away from her, and then grabs his shirt and jerks him forward with surprising strength. Her eyes are feverish and the heat from her hands is doing things to him that he really doesn't want to think about.

"Fine you want forgiveness this is how you earn it," she snarls before she's crushing her mouth against his.

And he is giving in. Her hot, wet tongue dips into his mouth, and he's kissing her back, and she's chasing away the cold, and he's feeling again, and it's like he's alive again. His pulse is flickering, growing stronger, until blood is racing through his body and pooling in hot, familiar places.

She roughly guides him back to her bed, and Edward is glad that her father is out working on a case. She shoves him back on the bed, and he lands with a grunt, savoring the fact that she can knock the wind out of him, and then she's on top of him, her hot, fevered hands reaching under his shirt and tearing it off over his head.

He lifts his arms and she pulls it free and tosses it to the floor, and her mouth is on the pulse at his throat, and greedily devouring him as she pushes him down into the mattress and holds his arms above his head as she grinds down against his crotch, and he groans at the friction against his aching hard on.

He shifts beneath her, and she let's go of his arms, and then his large, smooth hands are slipping beneath her tank top, pushing it up and revealing her pale breasts, which peak as the cold air in the room and his hands caress them. She arches up as he leans forward and takes her left breast into his mouth while he kneads the other with his hand as she hurriedly pulls off the top.

All the while his eyes never leave her face as the expressions change, and she's moaning and her head his rolling back, her hair spilling down her back like a shimmering waterfall. His free hand dips below her pajama bottoms and panties, and he slips a finger within her folds and finds that she's wet.

She jerks in surprise at his touch, and then she's writhing against his hand as he works a finger inside of her, and his throat constricts with how tight and wet she is. He needs to be in her, and something in her seems to recognize this as she pulls back and her hand slips down to the button on his jeans and soon she has it undone and she pulls the zipper down. He wiggles out of the jeans as she slips out of the panties and pajama bottoms and then she perches on top of him.

He looks up at her, unsure of what her next move will be, and then she takes his aching cock in her hand, not bothering with asking about a condom, because this is just a dream, like all of the other times, and she guides it to her opening, and she shifts a little, and then she plunges down on top of him, and he throws his head back at the exquisite feeling of her hot, tight, wet hole taking him deep inside.

She rolls her hips against his and he groans and thrusts upward. She lifts herself up until only his tip is left inside of her and plunges back down, her inner muscles squeezing him, as she begins to ride him, devising a fast, reckless rhythm of desperate rocking. She bends down and catches his mouth with hers and he's returning her kiss like a drowning man, and one hand twines into her hair while the other slips down between them and he's rubbing her clit, adding a little extra friction, and that molten heat pooling within her stomach begins to flood her senses as something inside of her snaps and her body is quivering around him, and her muscles are working against him, tightening, and as she calls out his name, "Edward," in this torn, broken, pleading voice, he erupts within in her violently.

His hands find their way to her hips and he's sure that his fingers will leave bruises on her pale, delicate skin, as he arches up with his orgasm. He's filling her over and over again with his seed, and he's crying her name out, over and over, until finally he's spent and he sags back against her bed.

She collapses on top of him, and stays there trembling in the aftermath, until her breathing returns to normal, and suddenly his chest stops moving, and he's losing the necessity to take air within his lungs. He lets out a short laugh as phantom tears slip from the corners of his eyes.

She looks up at him, and then she's slipping off of him and laying beside him, careful not to touch him now, and they are both thinking about how fucked up this all is.

Finally she turns to him and asks, "So what's it like?"

He gives a bitter sort of laugh as he answers, "What being dead? It's just this feeling of being cold. It's weird when a living person walks through me, their heat just floods through me, and all these feelings of calm and numbness that comes with the cold are gone for a few minutes."

He shudders after that admission, and when he turns his head to look at her, he realizes that she's staring at him. "Then why can I touch you? Why don't I pass through you like everyone else?"

"I don't know," he answers with a shrug. "Maybe you need me to be real, so you can exercise all those demons. I mean I'm probably your version of the devil right? Or like you said, this could all be a dream, and I'm just something really fucked up that you're imagining."

"This is getting weird," she replies softly, and she reaches for a blanket and wraps it around her as she sits up and draws her knees up against her chest, a shudder running up her spine.

Edward nodes in agreement, sits up and then leans toward her, dispelling the last of the breath in his lungs as he absorbs the sweet scent of her sweat, the heady, musky scent of sex, and the fruity smell of her hair. He presses his lips against her neck, and nibbles her ear for a moment, and she shivers, because his lips are so cold, and he was warm just a moment ago. He pulls back and gives her this strange, sad, longing look before he shifts toward her again, his lips brushing along her hair and her neck.

"Remember," he whispers against her ear. "This isn't cheating on your precious boyfriend if this is all just some messed up dream."

He slips off of the bed and in a blink of an eye he's fully clothed and slowly begins to fade. As he disappears she pinches her arm just below her left elbow, and it hurts as the tears slip slowly down her face.

•••

A/N: Thanks for reading!


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